It's the perfect time of year for spooky atmosphere again, is it not? This is less evil, yet more haunting type of a sound. Think Ulver's melancholic ambiance combined with Arcturus' spacey sort of quirkiness, throw in a few noisy black metal bits here and there, and you've got the basic blueprint for Smohalla's debut album Resilience.

To put things in perspective, this is another atmospheric album for those of us who usually avoid that type of pretentious crap. The haunting atmosphere is built from cold, distant sounding melodies that seem to gain more depth by being laid above the vocals, much like Ahab in that sense. There's a few subtle industrial touches here and there that add a bit to the overall feel which really completes the album with it's own sort of personality. Not to call this strictly an industrial album...Once again, it's definitely got a cold, industrial feel to it, but this element is only brought to the forefront perhaps about 40% of the time; in other words, a tasteful balance.

Smohalla does occasionally have an identity crisis though; there are times where they start thinking they're a prog band. Nothing against prog here, Smohalla just ain't a prog band, and they have a tendency to interrupt some fantastic melodies with these out-of-place noisefests. Their attempts at prog just sound like an aimless mess.

If they stuck to their strengths the entire way through, this would probably be a damn near perfect album. However, the melodies & atmosphere have got the depth to drive that haunting, soul-raping depression home, so I guess we'll just call Resilience "nearly damn-near perfect."

Great album. It reminded me of ''The Four Scissors'' from Transcending Bizarre and 'Reason and Divine'' from H.O.P.E.'

Really? For me this is a totally different kind of album to "The Four Scissors" which is far more melodic and approachable. This one is chock full of bizarre dissonance and oddities. Both are great albums in either respect though. I'm digging this a lot.